Southern Alamance students build hovercraft

Friday

They’re built out of plywood, tarp, PVC pipes, lawn chairs and tape, and powered by EGO leaf blowers, which allow them to hover just enough to glide over the school’s gym floor without scratching it.

Ryan Miller borrowed the idea from High Point University’s Physics Night, where he saw a similar design, and introduced it to his Education Technology students.

The kids were eager to get started, but quickly learned engineering lesson No. 1: the first prototype isn’t usually a success. In Miller’s words, it “crashed and burned.”

“We put way too much tarp, so it basically did a flop,” eighth-grader Zach Byrne said. “So we pulled back the tarp, and it was much more stabilized and worked a lot better.”

Separated into two groups — boys and girls — the students had to learn how to compromise on design elements and work through problems without an adult’s help.

“The first day or two I don’t help them at all, and it’s very frustrating for them at first because they’re used to somebody being over them, or having A, B, C, D choices on a test, and instead it’s you troubleshooting, figure it out on your own,” Miller said.

They were also given a tight budget.

“The funding part, I think, is the hardest part,” he added.

Each hovercraft was built for about $60 — not including the blowers, which Miller purchased using his own money. Lowe’s chipped in with an education discount for the materials.

Byrne said if they’d had more funding, they would have added box fans to propel the vehicles so they wouldn’t have had to push them back and forth themselves, but they did the best they could with the amount of money and time they had.

The entire process, from design to finished product, had to be completed in two weeks to debut at the school’s open house — and push their parents around on them.

With that deadline come and gone, Miller said, they can tinker a bit more.

The hope is that hovercraft-building will become a new semester-long project for each class, and that they’ll be able to partner with the school’s art students to “pimp out” the hovercraft with different colors and designs, and incorporate the “A” in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.

The Education Technology course is part of the school’s Career and Technology Education program.

Since the start of the semester, the class has designed and 3-D printed figurines, made water rockets, bridges, mouse trap cars and more.

Principal Heather Ward says she’s very proud of Miller and his students.

“I love watching the kids and seeing their wheels turning, and making connections, and creating, and problem-solving,” Ward said. “They’re doing all of those different things in this class, and I love it. And they love the class.”

Reporter Jessica Williams can be reached at jessica.williams@thetimesnews.com or at 336-506-3046. Follow her on Twitter at @jessicawtn.

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